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Originally Posted by Stuart
Might I point out that those were considered facts until they were proven wrong. They may well have been based on observations, but those observations would have been made with the limited technology of the time. After all, unless you go up thousands of feet, the earth looks flat.
We improved on that technology and we were able to observe that the earth is not flat.
The observations we make are still limited by the technology available. The technology will be improved and we will, in some areas re-evaluate what we know based on new observations.
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The scientific method has come a long way since those were considered to be accurate. These days the burden of proof for a theory is somewhat higher than any standard that'd be satisfied by those thoughts.
Just FYI the Earth was considered to be spherical by the Ancient Greeks. Not sure they had a way to go thousands of feet up. It was dogma, not science, that gave birth to the idea that the Earth is flat, and that it was widely accepted is largely a myth.
Said myth was actually largely perpetuated as a result of 'friction' between science and religion over the theory of evolution by natural selection. All the more amusing as even in the Middle Ages most Christians believed the Earth to be a sphere.
Science doesn't just make guesses on things and consider them viable theories. The burden of proof required for a scientific theory is considerably higher than that. Theories tend to be refined, some details about them corrected but they tend to remain accurate - Einstein's quantum theory of gravity is superior to Isaac Newton's in that it can handle a number of other scenarios. Does that mean Newton was spouting nonsense? Given his equations are used to guide space craft you'd presume not.